Scholarship guru teaches kids the ropes

UW student stresses life experience in applying for aid

Published 10:00 pm, Thursday, May 8, 2008

UW sophomore Sam Lim looks over a transcript worksheet with Ingraham High junior Meraf Kifle on Wednesday at the school.

UW sophomore Sam Lim looks over a transcript worksheet with Ingraham High junior Meraf Kifle on Wednesday at the school.

Photo: Mike Kane/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Scholarship guru teaches kids the ropes

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Sam Lim collects scholarships like some students amass parking tickets.

When gearing up for college, the University of Washington junior applied for more than 75 scholarships and was awarded nearly 20, from $50 to upwards of $70,000. That has been enough to pay the cost of attending the UW -- and enough to make him into a sort of scholarship guru whose nose for financial aid has made him a hit at local high schools.

Since his own days of filling out scholarship applications, Lim has helped others apply for hundreds more. It started with the creation of a Web site before he arrived at the UW and grew into a partnership with some of the university's mentorship programs.

Over two years, Lim has emerged as the UW's in-house scholarship expert, devoting mornings and afternoons every week to helping potential university students work through college and scholarship applications. He gives talks at high schools, conducts workshops and mentors out-of-state teens via e-mail.

Lim, a soft-spoken 20-year-old who walks with a slight but telling limp, says he's just paying it forward. Ultimately, he wants to show low-income students in high school that they, too, can use their life experiences to help with tuition.

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Indeed, the UW's "Scholarshipman" had to overcome much more than winning admission to the UW to move from his family's home in Spokane to Seattle two years ago. He battled a life-altering physical disorder for 10 years, underwent brain surgery and eventually taught himself to walk all over again.

"Scholarships are an investment in your development as a person," Lim said in an interview. "It's an investment from an organization in a person.

"The biggest mistake I see is people forgetting to tell their story," he added.

That's a mistake he's trying to rectify with the students he advises through the UW's Dream Project and Making Connections programs -- both of which provide peer-to-peer mentorship to high schoolers.

On the side, Lim is working to revamp his longtime Web site (scholarshipjunkies.com) into an interactive resource for high school students around the country.

Earlier this week, Lim greeted students near the entry of Ingraham High School's Little Theater. He was wearing the purple "dream team" T-shirt that he and other members of the UW's Dream Project use to distinguish themselves from the high school students. (After all, Lim pointed out, most of them don't look much older than the students they're mentoring.)

Need a pen? He brought a handful. Forgot your workbook? That's fine, but you have to bring snacks for everyone next week. Not sure how you're going to persuade a scholarship committee to choose you over hundreds of other applicants? Don't panic -- he has an answer for that, too.

"Scholarship essays are really personal essays that you have to reflect on," Lim said. "You have to know who you are."

Lim's own scholarship essay started out describing a basketball game he played in while in third grade, a game that ended with a sprained ankle that didn't heal quite right and a limp that became increasingly severe. After several consultations with doctors, he was diagnosed with dystonia, a neurological disorder that causes muscles to involuntarily contract.

As the disorder progressed, Lim had to give up basketball for crutches. "In fifth grade, I was kneeling at my desk -- I couldn't sit," he said.

Then in the sixth grade, he started using a wheelchair.

"As a little kid, I had always wanted to sit in a wheelchair and have someone push me around," Lim wrote in his essay, which chronicled his battle with dystonia. "This time, I could not have wanted anything less."

As the disorder progressed through his teenage years, Lim experienced ups and downs. He recalls having to recline in the wheelchair because sitting was impossible and that someone once mistook his disorder for an act of contortionism.

In his freshmen year, he had a metal pump installed in his abdomen to dispense a muscle relaxant, and that seemed to help. But Lim's life was transformed significantly more the summer before his senior year of high school, when he flew to San Francisco to undergo brain surgery.

A doctor implanted electrodes in his brain and connected those to an electrical implant in his chest. After the surgery, Lim underwent months of physical therapy.

At his high school graduation, Lim walked across the stage to claim his diploma -- a goal he and his father, a Spokane pastor, shared since early in the disorder's onset.

Lim tells the details of his story effortlessly -- something that comes with practice. He intends for the story to persuade high school students to dig deep within themselves and find their own story.

That's what scholarship organizations will ultimately be investing in, he said.

"He's really open about his story, which helps a lot," Fredolyn Millendez, a fellow Dream Project mentor, said as she and Lim prepared to leave Ingraham this week. "That makes students feel comfortable talking about the situations they might be in."

Lim remembers working with one student for hours over the course of days, trying to help make her scholarship essay more personal. Eventually, the girl e-mailed him to say she had rewritten the essay so that it didn't describe only her achievements -- it also described her life growing up without a father.

"I just want to be him -- I challenged myself with him as a guiding light," said Lily Ly, an Ingraham student who met Lim through the Making Connections mentorship program.

"During the springtime, when all the other mentors are like, 'Our jobs are done,' he's still there," Ly said.

With Lim's help, she has landed two scholarships and acceptance letters from seven universities.

Inspired by his pay-it-forward attitude, Ly, 18, has started working as a Dream Project mentor, even though she isn't through high school. That's the kind of ripple effect Lim is hoping for.